In a Nutshell

The Fine Print

Promotional value expires Jan 4, 2014.Limit 8 per person. Valid only for option purchased. Redeem starting day of show for a ticket at venue will call. Must show valid ID matching name on Groupon at Drury Lane Theatre. Refundable only on day of purchase. Must redeem together to sit together. Discount reflects Ticketmaster's current ticket prices-price may differ on day of the event. Doors open 1 hour before showtime. For ADA seating, call box office promptly upon receipt of voucher - availability is limited.Merchant is solely responsible to purchasers for the care and quality of the advertised goods and services.

The Deal

Doortime: one hour before showtime
*Ticket values include all fees.<p>

Performance Options

$32 for a Sunday or Thursday performance (up to a $52.25 value)

$37 for a Friday or Saturday performance (up to a $56.25 value)<p>

Hello, Dolly!

Before it made its Broadway debut in 1964, Hello, Dolly! had several other lives. Its plot came from English play A Day Well Spent, which Thornton Wilder turned into The Merchant of Yonkers and later The Matchmaker. At the center of all these versions was the endearingly meddlesome matchmaker who was known as Dolly Levi by the time the musical version landed on Broadway in the 1960s. When we meet her, Dolly’s latest task is to whisk bachelor, half-millionaire, and curmudgeon Horace Vandergelder from Yonkers to New York City to find love—although she’s secretly determined that he should find it in her. Along the way, she encounters other characters in need of her matchmaking skills and sets about arranging their happiness while plotting her own.<p>

To stage this Tony-sweeping production, you need a female lead capable of such rafter-shakers as “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” “Before the Parade Passes By,” and, of course, title song “Greetings, Dorothy.” In this production, that’s Karen Ziemba, winner of a Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle Award for her performance in Contact. The Chicago Reader praised her work finding the character’s “sadder, quieter tones” in the midst of the show’s “fine balance of corn and heart.”<p>

Drury Lane Theatre

There once were six Chicago theaters that went by the name Drury Lane. They were the life’s work of Tony DeSantis, one of Chicago’s best-known entrepreneurs and theater aficionados. Today, only the Oakbrook Terrace venue remains, a testament to changing times and a dwindling local muffin-man population. The 971-seat proscenium theater does right by its storied history—as do the elegant event spaces on site. Weddings and other events can be scheduled in the upscale English, French, and Crystal rooms, and the Grand Ballroom fills up with expos.<p>